


even if we're just dancing in the dark

by janie_tangerine



Series: jbweek 2019 [6]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blindfolds, Brienne is the Best, Bruce Springsteen References, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It, Implied Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Jaime Lannister Lives, Jaime/Brienne Appreciation Week 2019, Light Dom/sub, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Loathing, Song: Dancing In The Dark - Bruce Springsteen, Tumblr Prompt, Woman on Top, past abusive relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 09:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20964587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “I never thought you ever would want me. Not when — you had her. And you’re telling me that even if parts of you wants to go back because you don’t know how to be without her, you want me to help you not to because you’d rather stay if you could choose. Aren’t you?”“I am,” he admits, his voice dripping in shame.“And you think I’m hearing just that you want to go back,” she shakes her head.“What should you be hearing then?”“I’m hearing that you’d rather stay so much that you actually did tell me instead of disappearing into the night, that’s what I’m hearing. And why wouldn’t I hear you, when I do want you to stay and I think I know what took you to leave King’s Landing in the first place?”





	even if we're just dancing in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY SO THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FOR JBWEEK DAY SIX and ofc I am late, but anyway: I was taking Springsteen-inspired prompts at the end of september (I'll post the others on here soon!) and one was with jb + _dancing in the dark_, which fit perfectly for the _the long night_ and _together in the dark_ day six themes, so... here we go, have another of the endless LET'S FIX 8x04 takes which i didn't have in plans but it didn't want to be a modern AU and this is what happened, so... have fun I guess.
> 
> Aaand see you all in a few days with an extremely late day 7 entry which should hopefully be the last spitefic as well. /o/ ofc the title is from Bruce Springsteen AS OBVIOUS, nothing belongs to me and so on. *saunters back downwards towards the last one*

She should ask, _are we sure about this_.

Not even are _you_ sure.

Mostly because Brienne honestly doesn’t know if it’s a good idea or _not_, but.

But.

She looks down at the dark ribbon that she got from Sansa — she didn’t ask why Brienne would need one, and Brienne didn’t tell her, but — she can barely make sense of what they discussed before in her head, she can’t _explain_ it to anyone else.

She stops outside her own door. She’s not wearing armor, for once, just her usual clothes, her fingers clutching the ribbon.

She closes her eyes, then opens the door.

***

_“I — I think I need to talk to you,” Jaime says, hating how he sounds. His voice is not steady, and he doesn’t want to have this conversation, but he knows he needs to, or he will —_

_Or he will —_

_“All right,” Brienne answers, standing up from the chair she was occupying. She looks worried. Like she thinks he’s going to —_

_He swallows bile._

_“I don’t want to leave,” he says, and at _that_ her eyes turn surprised, widening, so blue even in the fire light —_

_“No one said you had to,” she replies, tentatively._

_“It’s not that.” He stops, breathes. “The letter. You were there when she read it.”_

_He doesn’t need to specify which letter it was. Brienne seems to know even too well._

_“Yes.”_

_He breathes in. “It’s been two days. I woke up when you were already gone and I felt — empty. Just — that.” He doesn’t know how else to put it. “And a part of me is saying I should go back and die with her already because I don’t — I don’t deserve this.”_

_“Jaime —”_

_“Wait. I need to finish.” Or he’s never going to tell her. “It doesn’t matter what you think. It matters that if you’re not there I feel like it’s not — nothing is worth it. And I know that it’s not — she wanted me dead. She sent Bronn to kill both me and Tyrion, for — I know. I swear I know. But I still hear that part of me, and it speaks with her voice, I don’t know how to say it. And — I hate it. I hate it and I’m tired of it and I thought I was done with her, but I’m not, or so it seems, and — I don’t want to. But I don’t know if I can… not go.”_

_He dares looking up at her. She hasn’t left. She’s just looking at him as if she’s mulling it over, but she hasn’t kicked him out yet, and then she takes a tentative step forward, her fingers lightly touching his wrist —_

_“But you don’t want to.”_

_“No,” he says at once, because he _doesn’t_ want to, he doesn’t, “but she’s been part of me so long, I — I’m tired of feeling like that. I hate myself because I do.”_

_She bites down on her lower lip, nodding, moving a bit closer._

_“I suppose — you’re telling me because —”_

_“Because I need you to help me.”_

_“With — with what?_

_“With _not_ listening to her,” he blurts, not minding that his voice is downright pleading now. “I — I wish I didn’t need it, I wish I could not ask, but I don’t want to go and I know that if I don’t ask I will try to.”_

_For a moment, he thinks she’ll say no, that she’ll finally see that he’s not worth her time and that he never was worth it for one moment, that she’ll send him away like she should have when he knocked on her door—_

_Instead —_

_“And do you have an idea of how you would want me to do that?” She asks, and she sounds like she means it._

_He’s hit with a wave of relief so hard it makes him almost dizzy._

_He doesn’t — not for sure._

_But maybe if he tells her some more, maybe they can figure it out._

_Seven hells, he really hopes they do._

***

She closes the door behind her, and for a minute she wonders, _will he be here, or maybe he’s gone already, but at least he did warn —_

He’s not. Their swords are leaning against the same wall, and he’s standing right where he poured her that wine for the first time when he knocked on her door, and she can smell that there _is_ wine in the jug. He’s wearing the golden hand, but he’s not… pretending to _hold it up_. She can see his right shoulder sagging downwards more than his left, and he’s — she can see that his head is a bit bent down.

She could tell him to turn over.

She moves behind him instead.

“Do you still want to —” She asks.

He shrugs, minutely. Then —

“Please,” he says, and his voice half-breaks on just that one word. “I just — the more time passes the more it feels like she just carved me up over and over and there’s nothing left and I wish Sansa never told me about that letter, and I know it’s not brave or _good_ or —”

“All right,” she says, shaking her head. “All right. No need to plead. And —” She swallows, her fingers reaching for the golden hand, making their way up to the straps on the wrist. “It’s brave that you asked for what you did. I really think so. I _do_.”

She tugs the hand off, and his shoulder moves back into a least painful position. She can hear him breathe in relief.

She throws the hand on the ground to the side. Her own left is still clutching the ribbon.

She breathes in, out, in, out.

Then she lets her grip go a bit slacker and grasps the other end of the ribbon with her right.

***

_“How — how are you like _this_?” He says, and Brienne thinks she doesn’t get it. He’s staring at her like he can’t believe she actually didn’t kick him out of the room instead of telling him what she just did._

_“How am I like _what_,” she shakes her head. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m — that’s how I’ve always been.”_

_“I just — I just told you that part of me wants to disappear into the night and die with Cersei and that I feel like I can only be as hateful as she is sometimes and you’re here telling me that you would — that you would — I thought —”_

_She wonders if it’s time she makes him get it._

_Maybe it is. She hasn’t told him, she had hoped she wouldn’t need to, but maybe it’s unavoidable, after all._

_“Do you know,” she whispers, “how many times I’ve wished I was… different?”_

_“Different, as in…?”_

_“Different, as in… different face, I guess, but that was predictable. Different hair, maybe, everyone always told me I looked even more like a jape if I had it long. My entire — I wanted to have the kind of body that allows you to wear pretty clothes and gowns and everything else other… attractive ladies had and that I hadn’t. Then I decided that it was getting me nowhere and I had to embrace what little I had, and it was enough. I knew that at least I could be… the next best thing to a knight with it. Then _you_ had to show up and at the end of everything you _did_ knight me and you searched me out and you made me feel like I actually — like if I wanted someone like you, then I _could_ have him. Don’t say anything yet.” She stops, breathes in. “I never thought you ever would want me. Not when — you had her. And you’re telling me that even if parts of you wants to go back because you don’t know how to be without her, you want me to help you _not_ to because you’d rather stay if you could choose. Aren’t you?”_

_“I am,” he admits, his voice dripping in shame._

_“And you think I’m hearing just that you want to go back,” she shakes her head._

_“What should you be hearing then?”_

_“I’m hearing that you’d rather stay so much that you actually did tell me instead of disappearing into the night, that’s what I’m hearing. And why wouldn’t I hear you, when I do want you to stay and I think I know what took you to leave King’s Landing in the first place?”_

_For a moment, she had thought, _would I just look so desperate that I’d do anything to make him stay_, but then he had looked at her with the eyes of a drowning man who has just latched himself to the only piece of wood he found floating at sea and she had known, _no, he’s the one who’s desperate out of the two of us.

_She’s never going to presume she can understand what he and his sister have. Had. Will have._

_But if he’s asking and she said no, even if she was hurt that part of him wanted to leave, she’d send him to his death._

_She likes to think that’s not what being a knight means._

***

He says nothing as she ties the ribbon around his eyes. She cared to pick one that was all soft silk when she had been given leave to just choose the one she wanted. She loops it once, twice, then ties it behind his head, not making the knot too tight but not even loose enough that it would fall.

“Is it good?” She asks.

He nods, but she does nothing. “Yes,” he finally says.

“Can you see anything?”

“No,” he says, and she knows he’s not lying.

She kisses the back of his neck, feeling him shiver, her hands running down to his wrists. She puts her fingers around his right wrist, the tips pressing against the scars running across the stump of it, and he gasps against her.

“Did that hurt?” She asks.

“No,” he says, “but — I felt it.”

He told her, _if I go away I need you to bring me back._

Well then.

“Right.” She lets it drop, kisses the back of his neck again, moves her hand to the middle of his chest, feeling that his heartbeat is out of control, but he’s not — he’s trying not to show it.

Never mind how _her_ heartbeat is picking speed.

She takes another breath, in and out, then moves in front of him, her hands on his shoulders, squeezing them, then she moves her hands at the hems of his shirt as she had done that first time. He raises his arms enough that she can slide it off comfortably, then moves a hand to his hip, making sure they don’t lose contact. She draws him slightly closer, wondering if she should have taken her shirt off before, but that’s —

Not the point.

She keeps her hands on his sides.

“Are you hearing… her?” She asks, figuring it would make the point.

“Yes,” he says at once, not taking time to do it.

“What is she saying? I need to know.”

He shrugs, minutely. “That — that I should — that I have no business being happy if she’s not. That I can’t be if I’m away from her. That we came into the world together and we should leave it the same way.”

She grips his sides a bit harder. “Is she here _now_?”

“No,” he says, his throat working up and down, up and down.

“Do you feel _me_ or her?” She goes on, finally pressing his chest against hers, her hands tightening their grip on his back, not doing anything else.

“You,” he says. “Just — just you.”

He says it with relief, like it’s what he _wants_, and she hates that he seems surprised at the concept that he can actually say it.

“Good,” she nods, and then she breathes in again. She doesn’t know what she’s even _doing_ and she has a feeling she’s in the same darkness as he is, but she thinks she understood what he meant when he asked and — she’s going to try. She has to. “So, let’s suppose that it took Lady Arya longer than it has to kill the Night King. If you had been struck deadly, would you have wanted me to be struck dead by the same wight as well?”

He shudders. Violently. “No,” he says. “No, of course not, I couldn’t —”

“That’s because you _care_ for me, don’t you?”

“Brienne, I —”

“No. Answer _that_.”

“Yes, _yes_, of course, but —”

“Good. Now I am going to tell you that if a wight had struck _me_ deadly, I wouldn’t have wanted you to come with me. It wouldn’t have crossed my mind for a single moment. I would have wanted you to live. Because —” She breathes in again, figuring that it’s time that she says it, and good thing he can’t see her, maybe it’ll be easier, and she hadn’t thought she would say it like _this_, but he sounded like he was dead inside when he asked her before, and he hadn’t since he said he wanted to actually let himself waste after they cut off his hand, and that’s not — she knows that’s not _him_. She knows he can be all warm, bright fire if he wants to, but to light a fire… well, a spark is needed.

Maybe she needs to provide it.

“— Because _I love you_, and I wouldn’t want anyone I love to die _with me_ as if they couldn’t exist after. You came all the way here and you _lived_ and you know you want to live. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Because you’re not _her_.”

“I’ve done —” He starts. “I’ve done hateful things for her. I’ve —”

“Jaime Lannister,” she interrupts, “you’ve thrown away your reputation to save half a million of innocent lives, you came up all the way here to fight for the living, you risked your life for mine more than once, you’ve freed your brother when she wanted you to kill him, I’m not going to listen you going on about how hateful or terrible you are because I’ve seen the contrary over and over again and I’ve _felt_ the contrary and I know you’re not like her at all, or you wouldn’t have come here in the first place. Kindly don’t even attempt to go there.”

He seems about to protest.

He doesn’t, his mouth closing, and she can see his lower lip trembling for a moment, but she pays it no mind. She grasps his maimed hand with hers, runs the other to his face, cups it just under the blindfold.

“Did you ever tell her about why you killed Aerys?”

“No,” he says, barely audible.

She doesn’t ask him _why_. “Did she ever ask?”

“No,” he admits. “She never did.”

“Have you ever asked yourself why?” She doesn’t know if she’s pushing too much, she doesn’t know, but he told her to, he told her, _I need you to bring me out of it, I need you to remind me why I came all over here_, and when she asked _and how do you think I should do it_, he said — he said _you would know better than her, anyway_. Gods. She hopes it’s working.

“No,” he sighs. “I — I never really questioned it.”

“Right. Can you do something for me now?”

“Yes,” he blurts, almost eagerly, and she hates how vulnerable it sounds, how he didn’t eve hesitate —

“Think about it. Why wouldn’t she ask?”

He goes silent, his wrist shaking against her hand, but he doesn’t tell her to stop. He thinks about it. She lets him do that.

“I guess,” he finally says, his voice so small it’s barely audible, “that she never asked because she didn’t care, and I never told her because — because part of me knew she wouldn’t care or she’d dismiss it as nothing and I didn’t want to face it.”

She runs her thumb over his face, feeling him press against it, then moves forward and kisses his forehead, just once —

“Then why would you throw your life away when you don’t even _want_ to?” She asks, hoping that if her touch is soft the blow will be less harsh, and she can hear him breathing in sharply, and then he shakes his head for a moment, and she can see tears falling down his face from under the blindfold —

“I guess —” He starts, stops, then starts again, “she always used to say I was the stupidest of them all. Maybe she was right about _that_, since put it like this only a complete idiot would do that.”

_That_ was not what she had been hoping he’d say, for —

She shakes her head, moves her other hand to the other side of his face, shaking her head. “No,” she says, “that’s nowhere near what you are and you know that. Never mind that your sister hardly seems like a good politician to me, but that’s not — that’s not _our_ field. I guess it never was. Being a knight is the most selfless thing anyone capable could decide to be with their skills. You chose it. You wanted it. I am not hearing yourself saying that it makes you an idiot. Or does that make me one, too?”

“Never,” he says, “_never_, you couldn’t —”

“Then you’re not, either. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s also why you came back?”

“I couldn’t live like a knight so far,” he admits, “figured I could die like one.”

“You haven’t. And you can live. No one stops you but yourself. But you’re more than she is. You should know that, if you don’t already.”

He nods once, his cheeks still wet, and his left hand is trembling —

“What if I don’t know how to be more than she is?”

“And what if you lived to find out instead?” She asks, and then he lets out a sob that sounds _painful_ —

“Jaime,” she says, “I can take that off —”

“No,” he shakes his head, “no, it’s — that’s not it, it’s good actually — I mean, not that I’m not seeing you because I want to, but like this I can feel only you and there’s just you and — leave it. Just, _please_ —”

She can’t hold back anymore — she leans down and kisses him, interrupting him the way he did that first night, swallowing his relieved moan as she pushes him back on the back and strips him of his breeches slowly, getting rid of her own and of her shirt before moving her hands to his shoulders, but then she realizes that she doesn’t really need to hold him down because he’s staying still, his skin all hot, and when she moves her hands over him he arches up into the touch and says _yes_ and her name all over and it feels like his entire body will jerk in response at every brush of her fingertips.

Brienne is not in a hurry — she kisses him once, twice, trailing along his shoulders and then back up to his mouth, leaving the blindfold on, telling him that he’s perfect right where he is and she needs him to not move and then puts her mouth on him until he _almost_ comes, _almost_, because it’s been a month and she can read him by now, she can read him just right the way she thinks she has for a long time, just not in their bed, too —

But now she _does_, and he groans in pleasure when after she spends a short while touching him everywhere but on his cock she finally sinks down on him, holding him close, her mouth over his ear, telling him that he can stay as long as he wants and that she’ll always, _always_ have him, and they’re moving against each other gracefully, _almost_ like the kind of dances that she never was asked to join throughout her life, but it doesn’t matter now because it’s just the two of them, in the dark, moving together, and then —

“Brienne, I — I wanted to say before, I — I don’t just _care_, you know.”

“Then what?” She asks, moving closer, _closer_ —

“I love you,” he says, breathless, and then she clamps down on him _again_ and he’s coming inside her and coming apart under her hands and she has to take off the ribbon because she needs to see his eyes and they’re green and bright

(_like she’s lit up that fire inside them_)

and blinking up at her like she’s too good to be true, and she never — she never knew she could be like that to anyone, but now she thinks she might like it, and so she tells him again that she does, too, more than anyone else, and she knows he won’t leave when just after they’re done he curls up against her, and he says he’s staying or he’ll try to.

“Well,” she says, kissing his cheek, “if you need a daily reminder, just ask.”

“You know what,” he replies, his eyes finally _alive_ and not as dead as they looked before, “maybe I could work with that.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, and apparently neither is he, and a moment later he’s nudged her on top of him again, and then they’re dancing in the dark all over again as the fire starts to die down, and then he whispers, _can you not give the lady that ribbon back_, and Brienne’s half-smiling as she says she might keep it.

“Good,” he says, “because I want to stay.”

And so he does.

End.


End file.
